A Taste of Ohio’s Past

Can’t decide what to make for dinner? Try perusing the selection of recipes we recently added to Ohio Memory! The recipes all date from the 19^th century and include dishes like gingerbread, cornbread and cakes, as well as recipes for household items like dyes for wool yarn, writing ink, and pigeon bait.

For the most part, these recipe books were compiled by women and reflect the type of work they would have been doing on a daily basis. It can be difficult to find materials created by women in archival collections, especially before the 20^th century. There are a variety of reasons for this, including the fact that men tended to be in positions of power and that women’s work consisted of activities that were less likely to have been recorded than work done by men. These small collections offer a glimpse into that daily lives of the women who created them.

These recipes also give us an opportunity to learn about what types of foods the average Ohioan may have been eating on a daily basis, and what types of foods would have been available to Ohioans in the 19^th century. Most of the ingredients, like milk, eggs, and apples are still common in most kitchens, but other items, like whortleberry (a relative of blueberries and cranberries) might be harder to find in modern grocery stores. We can compare these recipes to another recipe book written in Orlando, Florida in 1885, which includes ingredients that aren’t found in the recipes from Ohio, including peaches and coconut.

In most cases we don’t have a lot of information about the women who complied these recipes, but in the case of Martha Ann Hoge, we were able to do some genealogical research and learned that she was born on November 18, 1825. She married Alfred Thomas in 1854 and together they had 3 children, Henry T Thomas, Margaret Hoge Thomas, and Caroline L Thomas. Martha died in 1913 at the age of 87 and is buried in Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus.

The vast majority of Martha’s recipes are for things like cakes, cookies, biscuits, and puddings. Many of the recipes are attributed to other women, including a Rev. Mrs. Gilbert and Miss Annie Putnam of Gambier, Ohio. In addition cooking recipes, Martha also collected recipes for a handful of home remedies, including tooth powder, syrups and elixirs, and a treatment for bedbugs involving eggs and mercury.

These items are just a portion of the materials on Ohio Memory related to food and drink. We hope you will take a minute to peruse recipes belonging to Eliza Tucker, Martha Hoge, Anna Woodrow, Mary Hoffman, and others.

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Thank you to Katy Scullin, Ohio Memory Program Coordinator at the Ohio History Connection, for this week’s post!